Write/Read data to .plist file.

I was struggling for a very long time with this feature and I was so angry that nobody put a complete code – just simple lines. I’ll hope this will be helpfull.

Why using plists? Becouse it’s simple, effective and comparing to NSUserDefaults very fast.

The main reason that many people failed with this, was the fact, they are trying to save data in Bundle Directory. It can’t be done, this place is protected and be a completed “one thing”. So the best option is to save your data into documents directory.

First of all add a plist to your project in Xcode. For example “data.plist”.

Next, look at this code which creates path to plist in documents directory:

NSError *error;
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES); //1
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0]; //2
NSString *path = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"data.plist"]; //3

NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

if (![fileManager fileExistsAtPath: path]) //4
{
	NSString *bundle = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"data" ofType:@"plist"]; //5

	[fileManager copyItemAtPath:bundle toPath: path error:&error]; //6
}

1) Create a list of paths.
2) Get a path to your documents directory from the list.
3) Create a full file path.
4) Check if file exists.
5) Get a path to your plist created before in bundle directory (by Xcode).
6) Copy this plist to your documents directory.

Ok, next read data:

NSMutableDictionary *savedStock = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile: path];

//load from savedStock example int value
int value;
value = [[savedStock objectForKey:@"value"] intValue];

[savedStock release];

And write data:

NSMutableDictionary *data = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile: path];

//here add elements to data file and write data to file
int value = 5;

[data setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:value] forKey:@"value"];

[data writeToFile: path atomically:YES];
[data release]

Remember about two things:

1) You must create a plist file in your Xcode project.
2) To optimize your app, better is to save all the data when application (or for example view) is closing. For instance in applicationWillTerminate. But if you are storing reeaaaally big data, sometimes it couldn’t be saved in this method, becouse the app is closing too long and the system will terminate it immediately.

I hope it will help you

Write/Read data using NSUserDefaults

Here I will show you how to use NSUserDefaults to save data.
This method is very simple but very slow, so it’s not good to use it to storage a big data.

Just add this line to setup :

NSUserDefaults *prefs = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];

And to read data use:

int value;
value = [prefs intForKey:@"value"];

To write data:

int value = 1;
[prefs setInteger:value forKey:@"value"];
[prefs synchronize];

Remember to synchronize after all saves, not at the end.

Of course you can write/read other data types.

From Mac Dev Center:

– setBool:forKey:
– setFloat:forKey:
– setInteger:forKey:
– setObject:forKey:
– setDouble:forKey:
– setURL:forKey:

In my apps I use it to check whether the app runs at the first time or not.

Just do something like this:

	if ([prefs boolForKey:@"first_time"] == 0){
		// First run
		[prefs setBool:1 forKey:@"first_time"];
		[prefs synchronize];
	} else{
		// Second run
	}

It works becouse all unsaved data are from default 0.